Football Daily | Nottingham Forest and a Premier League rise no one saw coming

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Although they enjoyed the luxury of a six-point buffer zone, Nottingham Forest finished just one place above the relegation zone when the last season ended in May. One of the campaign’s top-tier b@nter clubs, they made an outcast of their captain and club legend Joe Worrall, all the better to free up dressing-room space for at least one of the 4,189 new signings they’d made before it began. In December they sacked their gaffer and replaced him with an apparently beaten managerial docket famously described on a certain podcast not a million miles from here as looking like “a sad Jedi” following his disastrous, short reign at Spurs. They were also docked four points for financial shenanigans and that’s before you get to the very public diatribe questioning the PGMOL’s integrity because one of their video assistant referees happened to be a Luton fan, a Social Media Disgrace that would ultimately cost them £750,000.

The FA had so much control over our money and income … we couldn’t go: ‘Just [eff]ing give us more money’, even though it was really tempting to do that because it was ridiculous what the lads were getting compared to us” – England legend Steph Houghton sits down with Donald McRae to talk about the quest for parity, struggling under Sarina Wiegman, and supporting her husband with MND.

Re: harsh red cards (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). Back in (I think) 2007, I copped a red while running the line. As a first-team player, we had a linesman roster for the first half of the reserves game and I was on duty. At a corner (my club attacking), the inswinger was easily claimed by the keeper, a good metre inside the field of play. The comically inept referee decided, from his viewpoint at the top of the box, that the ball had crossed the line and awarded another corner. Understandably, the opposition looked at me with bewilderment. Upon explanation that my flag was down and I’d talk to the referee, said official pulled me aside and asked why I didn’t raise my flag for a ball that was clearly out. When I said something to the effect of ‘well … because it wasn’t’, he gave me a yellow for dissent. My instantaneous ‘are you joking?’ earned me an instantaneous second yellow” – Jarrod Prosser.

At university, my teammate Henry Mance had his name taken for, probably, a typically rustic challenge. ‘Mance … as in romance,’ he helpfully offered the referee. The card was immediately upgraded to a more romantic red” – Paul Reeve.

Send letters to mailto:[email protected]. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Jarrod Prosser, who lands a Football Weekly scarf. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.

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